TOOTH BRIAN DENGEL
TIPS GENER AL MANAGER KHK-USA
Figure 1
The benefits of converting to helical gearing
The introduction of a helix angle can change
the performance of a spur gear.
Figure 1
T he simplest-to-design and the easiest-to-use gearing design is that
of the spur gear. It has teeth that are parallel to the shaft axis, and
the center distance of a pair is easily defined. However, the intro-
duction of an angling of the teeth, relative to the shaft center, will
greatly change the performance of the gears.
Many gearing applications can be converted from spur gear pairs
into helical gear pairs. There are many reasons to consider swapping
out an existing spur gear pair and replacing it with a helical gear
pair. One of these reasons is a reduction in noise. Since a helical gear
maintains constant contact with its partner throughout the tooth
mesh, it will produce less noise than that of a comparable spur gear
pair that has an episodic contact pattern during mesh.
Another benefit for a spur gear to be “converted” Figure
into a2helical
Figure 1: Two styles of helical gears.
gear is the increased torque carrying capacity. Spur gears have a face
width that is easily measured. Helical gears have a physical face width
and an effective face width. The physical face width measurement
is the same as that of spur gear. The effective face width takes into
Figure 2
account the angle of twist and results in a working face width that
is defined by the equation:
FWe = FW / cos(B)
where FW is the normal Face Width and B is the helix angle.
This increase in face width permits the gear mesh to withstand
additional torque using the same physical space. With this additional
torque capacity, you can either re-build an existing, under designed,
gear train or you can use gears that are smaller and reduce the weight
of the system.
There are two styles of helical gears: They are transverse (axial)
pitch helical gears and normal pitch helical gears. The most common
form is normal pitch. In this case, the teeth are cut such that the
pitch of the gear when measured in the axial direction is enlarged.
This “enlarged” tooth form also increases the center distance of the
gear mesh. In order to replace spur gears with normal helical gears,
you would need to either modify the center distance of the gear pair
or you would need to adjust the numbers of teeth in order to main- Figure 2: Direction of rotation and thrust force.
tain the center distance. For transverse helical gears, the pitch of the
teeth in the axial direction is equivalent to that of a similar pitch hand, but the mating gear must be the opposite hand in order for
spur gear. This makes transverse helical gears ideal as replacement the gears to mesh. The second is the thrust loading introduced by
existing spur gear pairs. the direction of the helix of each gear. The possible combinations
An example of these two tooth forms is detailed in Figure 1. are show in Figure 2.
When converting from spur gearing to helical gearing, in addi- For these gears, the proper thrust bearings must be selected so
tion to maintain the center distance of the mesh, another issue to they absorb the thrust loads imparted by the helix angle.
address is the direction of the helix for each gear. This is necessary From a practical point of view, helical gears can have any helix
for two reasons: The first reason is helical gears need to mate with angle from 1 degree through 44 degrees. At 45 degrees, they are
gears of opposing hands. The pinion can be either left hand or right considered to be crossed helical gears or alternately screw gears.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Brian Dengel is general manager of KHK-USA, which is based in Mineola, New York. Go online to www.khkgears.us
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